Archives for the 'asspatents' Category
IM IN YR IM SESSION, TERMINATING YR CONVERSATION. KTHXBYE.
Wednesday, November 7th, 2007
Techdirt notes a patent application from Microsoft covering Automatic Goodbye Messages. Says submitter theodb (who is incidentally highly skilled at identifying asspatents):
By automatically sending messages like ‘Have a great afternoon!’, ‘Sorry, I have got to go!’, ‘Have a terrific day!’, ‘Ciao, Harry!’, or even a simple ‘Bye!’ at the end of an IM session, [...]
Because it would be expensive, impractical, and not fix the core problem…
Monday, December 25th, 2006
…to answer my own question below, but you’ll come to that soon enough.
Doc Searls just posted on a topic that’s been coming back into my head in recent days, for some odd reason.
My response to the “defensive patent” argument is that a company holding “defensive patents” makes me feel almost exactly as safe as somebody [...]
Stating the Obvious?
Friday, September 1st, 2006
Over at OnLamp, Jason Cole yesterday suggested that we should assemble a massive, public database of all the “obvious” ideas we can think of as a defense against such joys as the Blackboard asspatent.
I’m reminded of a scene that’s appeared in more bad science fiction than I care to admit to consuming: a time [...]
Who says patents don’t drive innovation?
Thursday, August 31st, 2006
It should come as no surprise that in the light of Apple’s settlement, Creative is continuing the shakedown made possible by its patent on hierarchical menus. (Though lest you start worrying, the patent is limited in scope — it wouldn’t cover such interfaces in digital cameras, for example. That patent is held by [...]
Friday afternoon amusements: hi there, USPTO!
Friday, April 21st, 2006
Happy Friday, all. Got back to my desk and there was a message waiting for me, indicating that I’d had a very special visitor to this post on the USPTO’s little patent difficulties.
Date: 21 Apr 2006 14:45:03 -0400 (EDT)
From: Sea Monkey Watch
To: seamonkey@absono.us
Subject: Visitor – U.S. Patent and Trademark Office
151.207.242.4 came by for a [...]
Comparing Two Things: Still Patented After All These Years
Monday, October 24th, 2005
Yesterday I pointed out a little blast from the past: the origins of the term “asspatent,” in this September 2004 post. While you should, of course, read that post in its amusing entirety, the business end was an imagined dialogue between Lawyer and Boss at Commtouch: a “vendor of email technology, messaging applications, [...]
